SACRAMENTO — The Assembly approved sweeping climate-change legislation Tuesday that extends the state’s targets for reducing greenhouse gases from 2020 to 2030 in a controversial bill that saw White House officials and Gov. Jerry Brown privately urging lawmakers for support.

Under SB32, the state would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The bill would piggyback on AB32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which calls for California to reduce greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020. The state is expected to reach that target.

But one of the state’s programs to fight climate change — cap and trade — remains threatened by a legal challenge that has cast uncertainty on its future and has discouraged the carbon credit market. And, on Tuesday, officials revealed that the latest auction, once again, fell short of their hopes.

SB32, which the Senate has already passed, heads back to that body, which is expected to pass the amended legislation before the Legislature’s deadline next Wednesday. Brown said in a statement that he will sign the bill when it reaches his desk, and he expressed optimism about the future despite the threats to the cap-and-trade program.

On Thursday, a member of Governor Jerry Brown's administration announced that California residents will have the opportunity to control climate change. In two years California voters will be able to decide if they should allow the program to continue.

Media: WochIt Media

“California’s charting a clear path on climate beyond 2020 and we’ll continue to work to shore up the cap-and-trade program, reduce super pollutants and direct more investment to disadvantaged communities,” Brown said in a statement.

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Lawmakers who supported the bill said they agreed with opponents that more needs to be done to ensure climate change policies help poor communities, not just affluent coastal areas.

“In my district, 6 out of 10 children have asthma,” said Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella (Riverside County), who carried the bill in the Assembly. “We don’t have clean air. In this context of climate change and global warming, we talk a lot about making sure we save polar bears. I want to talk about saving children and making sure they don’t have to live with dirty air.”

It was unclear up until the vote Tuesday whether the more moderate Assembly Democrats would pass the legislation after it overwhelmingly failed last year in the house. Leading up to the vote, several Assembly members said they were contacted by White House officials and Brown urging them to support SB32.

Assemblyman Ken Cooley, D-Rancho Cordova (Sacramento County), said he was called by Jerry Abramson, deputy assistant to President Obama, after he voted against the bill last year. Cooley said he had already planned to vote in favor of the bill before the call from Abramson.

SB32 passed 42-29 on a mostly party-line vote with all but one Republican opposing. Assemblymen Jim Frazier, D-Oakley, and Adam Gray, D-Merced, voted against the bill while five other Democrats abstained. Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R-San Ramon, was the lone Republican to vote for the bill.

Brown set the targets contained in SB32 in an executive order last year. Lawmakers wanted to codify the targets set by the executive order so they could not easily be erased or eased by whomever replaces Brown in 2018.

Last year, SB32 failed in the final days of session in a 30-35 vote in the Assembly, forcing the bill’s author, Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills (Los Angeles County), to turn it into a two-year bill. The bill needed 41 votes to pass, but failed to garner the support last year of the Assembly’s moderate Democrats, who argued that poor communities were not seeing the benefits of the state’s climate-change policies.

This year’s bill is tied to another billby Garcia, AB197, which would direct the California Air Resources Board to prioritize disadvantaged communities in its climate-change regulations, and to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the measures it considers. That helped earn the additional support it needed, and Brown said he would sign that bill as well.

Still, Republicans blasted SB32 as giving too much power to the Air Resources Board in determining how the state meets its targets and said the regulations already in place have hurt businesses.

“Tell the truth, this bill increases (the Air Resources Board’s) discretion to further pass restrictions and regulations on Californians that will hurt businesses,” said James Gallagher, R-Plumas Lake (Yuba County). “Tell the truth in how we are in last place in manufacturing jobs created and it’s because of AB32.”

An analysis of the bill says SB32 will cost an unknown amount, at least in the hundreds of millions of dollars, to achieve the new targets.

“We should be talking about the cost to businesses,” said Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond. “But we should be talking about the cost to not take action. It’s irrefutable that our failure to act will contribute to negative consequences to many children. This bill is about protecting the long-term needs of California.”

One concern for environmentalists is that SB32 did not specifically extend the cap-and-trade program, despite attempts by the governor’s office to get it in. There’s likely to be a renewed push to pass it in the next legislative session, predicted Steve Chadima, California director for Advanced Energy Economy, an association of business leaders. The governor’s office has indicated it would pursue a ballot measure in 2018 if needed, and the Air Resources Board is already laying plans for cap and trade beyond 2020.

“They’re going to do it one way or another,” Chadima said.

Cap and trade works by capping the amount of greenhouse gases that large companies can produce. Businesses can then buy permits to pollute at auctions, or trade them among themselves. The goal is to achieve a low-carbon outcome that does not strain the economy.

The auction occurred last week before the fate of SB32 was known. But the passage of SB32 will not eliminate doubts as to the program’s future, according to Michael Wara, an associate professor at Stanford Law School.

Although SB32 passed, “it didn’t pass by a two-thirds majority, which is highly significant from a legal perspective,” he said. That’s because a two-thirds majority is required for the Legislature to approve a tax. Whether the revenue from the Air Resources Board’s quarterly auctions constitute a tax is being questioned in a legal challenge from the California Chamber of Commerce.

Amid that uncertainty, only about 32 percent of allowances sold at the most recent auction — a slight improvement over the May auction, when only about 10.5 percent sold. But demand was still considerably lower than in past years, and the auction raised only about $8 million for the state, according to Erica Morehouse of the Environmental Defense Fund — much less than usual. That means less money for high-speed rail and other programs funded by cap and trade.